Inquiry finds German Greens campaigned to legalise sex with children in the 1980s

An inquiry has found that the German Green party - currently third in the polls ahead of elections next month - favoured the legalisation of sexual relations between adults and children in their founding manifesto.

Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit claimed in a 1975 book that he interacted sexually with children while working at a kindergarten.

Sex with minors should only be treated as a crime if it involved the use or threat of violence, or the abuse of a relationship of dependence, according to the Greens' original policy programme. The German criminal code bans sexual relations with children under 14, or under 16 if the other partner is teaching or caring for them.

The Greens announced earlier this year that they would set up an inquiry into their links with paedophile groups, following a row over a Green MEP Daniel Cohn-Bendit's apparent endorsement of sex with children.

The first report of the inquiry, published today, concluded that the Greens "set barely any boundaries on sexual relations between teachers, carers and their charges – or between adults and children".

The study, carried out by researchers at the Göttingen Institute for the Study of Democracy, found that the Greens did not just sympathise with the aims of paedophile groups to legalise sex with children, but actively promoted them at the start of the 1980s. The full results of the inquiry will be published next year.

The demand for legalisation was withdrawn during the course of the 1980s after campaigning by women's groups within the Green party.

The inquiry found that the Greens had now "irrevocably broken" with their past.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a student leader in the 1968 unrest in Paris, claimed in a 1975 book that he interacted sexually with children while working at a kindergarten. The remarks came to light again this year when he was awarded a prize by the Theodor Heuss Foundation, which honours West Germany's first president.

In the book, The Great Bazaar, he wrote: "My constant flirtations with the children took on erotic characteristics. It happened to me several times that a few children undid my flies and started to stroke me."

He subsequently insisted that he was not a paedophile and had made the remarks solely in order to shock "bourgeois" society.

Ahead of the report's publication, Green party leader Jürgen Trittin told a Sunday newspaper: "I do not know anyone who claims that there has been systematic abuse within the party."

He said that any possible crimes were not attributable to "party structures, but to individuals".

The Green party, founded in 1980, is now a mainstream left-wing party in German politics. Between 1998 and 2005 the Greens formed a coalition government with the main opposition party, the Social Democrats.